Importance of Social Networking in eBusiness

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Engaging with the customer through your website may not be enough. To be truly engaged with your customer, you may need to have a presence on social networking sites.

The biggest social networking sites currently are Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Most businesses find it useful to be available on Facebook and Twitter, at the least. An online community connected to your business through a social networking site can serve several purposes.

1. Brand building and promotion:

Cocoberry is a frozen yoghurt company and it had over 35,000 fans on Facebook by 2010. Cocoberry uses its Facebook page in conjunction with its website to create a strong brand amongst its target market.

2. Customer feedback:

3. Lead generation:

Sahil and Sitanshi Parikh returned from the US to set up Desk Away, which is a web-based project collaboration software that provides teams a central location to easily organize, manage, and track their projects and work. They use their Facebook page primarily for generating leads by con­necting with potential customers.

4. Online reputation management:

Devesh Mishra, a taxi driver in Banaras, does a great deal of business with foreigners by leveraging his video on Youtube.

5. Online sales:

Basics Life, a jeans brand, is able to drive sales by directing its Facebook fans to online and brick and mortar stores.

There are two basic ingredients to a successful social media campaign.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

i. The compelling reason for the person to join the community

ii. The compelling reason for the person to participate in the community on an ongoing basis

The extent to which you are able to define these objectives and keep sight of them will determine the effectiveness of the community.

Tracking Social Media:

As the Facebook page is increasingly becoming the focal point of social media, the metrics discussed are in the context of Facebook. A free metrics dashboard called Facebook Insights, available to all Facebook users, can be used to track the following metrics:

1. Fan Growth:

The number of fans, including unsubscribed fans, on your page over a period of time. You can also see where fans came from.

3. Interaction:

The extent of interaction is measured by number of page views, wall posts, likes, and comments. It also tells you about the engagement pat­tern of your page. You can also understand what kind of content (text, image, video, contests, etc.) is working or not working.

There are also other tools designed by other companies like Virtue and Hubspot, which can help you in understanding the relative value of your Facebook page.